Her hold on us

`Some sweet kid." Louis Calhern, playing a slick businessman who keeps a young mistress on the side, looks at his luscious blond beauty, her lounging pajamas hugging her body, and once again he sighs, "Some sweet kid."

That was Marilyn Monroe in "The Asphalt Jungle" in 1950, the same year in which she was memorably introduced by George Sanders in "All About Eve" as "Miss Casswell, a graduate of the Copacabana school of dramatic arts."

Those two images, of the sexy little sugar plum and of the dumb blond, were to last through Monroe's entire career, which ended suddenly with her death in 1962. She was 36 then; had she lived, Friday would be her 75th birthday.

Over the years, Monroe's image as the ultimate Hollywood sex symbol has not waned. Along with Elvis Presley and the Beatles, her legend is never out of print in biographies, novels and picture books; and, since her movies are readily available on video and are often shown on television, she continues to reach new generations of fans. The recent film "Wonder Boys" featured a college professor so obsessed with the Marilyn legend that he collected Monroe memorabilia, including the jacket she wore for her wedding with Joe DiMaggio.

Part of this appeal was, of course, her body, which Monroe displayed proudly. Certain film clips -- the skirt of her white dress billowing up as she giggles delightedly in "The Seven Year Itch" -- have become indelible expressions of sex appeal in our pop culture. But in addition to the sex, there was a hint of a gifted actress. Certainly she could turn in a smart comic performance, as she did when she played the near-sighted blond in "How to Marry a Millionaire."

She was sexy, smart, talented and, perhaps most important of all, she seemed ever so vulnerable, even when she was playing wicked women. She appeared to need someone to protect her, to take care of her, to take her away from all the troubles of her life. From the western "River of No Return" to the contemporary romance "Bus Stop," she was the bruised but sweet girl looking for a way out of a wretched existence.

And that may be the crucial secret of her long-lasting appeal. She was open and innocent in a way that Madonna or Jennifer Lopez or any of the recent crop of sex symbols never have been. We wanted to save her.

Because she died suddenly, after swallowing a mix of pills and alcohol, the turbulent nature of her last days, mostly taken up with the troubled shooting of a romantic comedy, have increased the aura of pathos surrounding her life.

Women, including some of her co-stars, look on her as the unhappy little sister they wanted to take under their wing. Men, including ex-husband Arthur Miller, saw her as a tortured soul and believed they could fight off the internal demons that possessed her. But, as Miller later wrote in his "Timebends" memoir, "I despaired at my presumption, the stupidity of thinking that I alone could keep her from harm. . . ."

In the end, nothing was enough. Analysts, physicians, husbands, lovers, directors and drama coaches -- none of them could rescue her.

A film retrospective

The legend, and the sense of loss, is being further enlarged this week with the release on DVD of several of Monroe's starring films. Fox Home Entertainment has released "The Diamond Collection," a boxed set consisting of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" (1953), "How to Marry a Millionaire" (1953), "There's No Business Like Show Business" (1954), "The Seven Year Itch" (1955) and "Bus Stop" (1956), plus a new documentary on "The Final Days" that features a 35-minute reconstruction of "Something's Got to Give," her last, unfinished movie.

At the same time, MGM Home Entertainment has released a new special edition DVD of her best film, the comedy "Some Like It Hot" (1959), with a commentary by co-star Tony Curtis ( "I've been quoted as saying that kissing Marilyn was like kissing Adolf Hitler. I never said that.").

What problems?

Over and over, in phone interviews with fellow actors and industry executives who knew her work in these films and others, one hears the same refrain of regret.

"I knew nothing of all those problems with retakes and flubbed lines," said Jane Russell, her "Blondes" co-star. "Maybe that came later. With me, she was a professional. She knew exactly how to make an entrance and she knew exactly what to do when the camera was on her. But she was a very, very sensitive young woman. She was shy, period. She would arrive early, spend a long time on her makeup and then sit in her dressing room, almost as if she was afraid to come out. So I would go there, knock on the door and say, `Come on, baby. It's time to go.' And off we would go for the filming."

Donald O'Connor, who romanced her in "Show Business," recalled similar experiences: "She was late on the set, fussing over her makeup, I guess. But she was a dear and a pro." There were no signs of bad temper. In fact, according to O'Connor, she was a funny and gracious co-worker. "The movie's director once asked me to stand on a box because Marilyn was a little taller than I am," O'Connor said. "I really didn't want to do that. It's emasculating, you know, to stand on a box when you're playing a scene with a beautiful woman. So I asked Marilyn, because the director wouldn't, if she would mind taking off her shoes. She kicked them right off, and everything was fine."

`Disrobed and ill'

By the time she started filming "Something's Got to Give," however, Monroe was "disrobed and ill," according to David Brown, the producer who worked briefly on the movie. She had barely made it through shooting "The Misfits," with Clark Gable, which had not been a box-office success.

"She was a fine actress," Brown said. "She had much to give. Her face could be a road map of expressions. And she wanted to do good things. Her head was in the skies artistically. But she had been a victim of sexual harassment in those pre-feminist days, and she had been typecast as the dumb blond. It was an embarrassment for her. She could always give a good performance, but her life near the end was in terrible shape."

Because of the suddenness of her death, Monroe's last few days have been analyzed in detail in everything from tabloid headlines to full-length biographies.

Her appearance at a birthday celebration for President Kennedy, dressed in a shimmering body sheath and breathlessly singing "Happy Birthday, Mr. President," has fueled endless speculation about her relationship with both John F. and Bobby Kennedy; and the photos of her nude swimming scene in "Something's Got to Give" are still tantalizing evidence of the potency of her sexual attraction.

The "Diamond Collection" documentary "Marilyn Monroe: The Final Days," to be shown at 7 p.m. Friday night on the American Movie Classics cable channel, has one great advantage over all other reports. It had access to studio production charts, giving the bare facts of how many shooting days Monroe was absent from the "Give" set (17 out of 30), and it had hundreds of feet of printable film that showed how Monroe performed when she was on the set.

From that film, "The Final Days" producer Kevin Burns (no relation to Ken Burns)was able to fashion a featurette of usable material that, while far from being a complete movie, gives contemporary viewers a good look at the work Monroe and co-stars Dean Martin and Cyd Charisse did under the direction of George Cukor.

A remake of the 1940 comedy "My Favorite Wife," "Something's Got to Give" cast Monroe as a woman who, believed dead in a plane crash, returns home after several years to find her husband (Martin) about to marry another woman (Charisse).

`Road map of expressions'

One wordless scene, when Monroe enters her house for the first time on her return, clearly demonstrates the "road map of expressions" to which Brown referred. Longing, joy, anxiousness and wonder all shine out as Monroe takes in her surroundings.

But there were other scenes that did not go well. As Charisse recalled, "I was on the set the day she had to walk down a flight of stairs. That was all. But she kept doing it over and over again because her drama coach (Paula Strasberg) wasn't satisfied with it. Poor George Cukor. He was so patient. But he couldn't do a thing about it."

James Haspiel, a Monroe biographer and fan, insists that not all of this was Monroe's fault. "Marilyn became a scapegoat for all of 20th Century Fox's problems at the time, including the wild expenses of `Cleopatra,'" he said. "There's a scene in the documentary where she plays with her dog, a trained animal who wasn't behaving well. Why did they have to put her through those endless retakes? Her double, who was on the set and dressed like Marilyn, easily could have done that scene. And then the studio had the nerve to say it was her fault that the production was behind schedule."

`A mess, really'

Nevertheless, Charisse concluded, "Everybody tried. Dean Martin was so sweet. But he had another picture to make, and finally he just couldn't wait.

"It was a mess, really."

For Kevin Burns, the documentary's producer, "Everyone made a good effort, but the script wasn't very good, and Marilyn just wasn't there."

As for the various conspiracy theories surrounding Monroe's death, Burns said, "I don't think her fans want to believe that she was the instrument of her own destruction. When you see the story of her last days unfold, her death does not seem so shocking. She was very much in the habit of taking pills and washing them down with a lot of champagne, which is a recipe for disaster.

"But when people like Marilyn become something more than human to us, we cannot believe that they had such human faults.

"Of course, she was looking to the future. But she was at the end of her road. She died."

An AMC marathon of Monroe classicS

American Movie Classics is mounting a day-long salute to Marilyn Monroe's 75th birthday. Capping a marathon of some of her most celebrated films is "Marilyn Monroe: The Final Days" (7 and 9 p.m. Friday), which offers a fresh take on the actress' 1962 death.

The documentary solidifies Monroe's image as a beautiful, magnetic icon whose reliance on others and her near-paralyzing insecurities were tragic.

It smartly gives her death, which has been overanalyzed throughout the years, a different look through the roughly 500 minutes of footage that was shot for the 1962 sex romp "Something's Got to Give."

As a result, we get a detailed look at the crumbling of a star, and the frustrations involved when a film is taken down with her.

It also shows the politics, backstabbing and maneuvering that takes place during the making of a film when such an unreliable, fragile, but still bankable, star is attached.